Archive for the ‘military’ Category

Anti-war activist Janice Roberts, a 63-year-old Dorchester, Massachusetts resident, has refused to rent an apartment to Sgt. Joel Morgan, 29, a veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Roberts told Morgan, according to the lawsuit Morgan filed this week, that his military service presented a “conflict of interest” for her, since she was a peace activist. “Because of what you told me about the Iraq war … we are very adamant about our beliefs … it’s just not comfortable for us … and I’m sure now that you know this, it would not be comfortable for you,” Roberts said via voicemail to Morgan. “I would suggest you do the right thing and look for a place less politically active or controversial.”

Morgan, who is no longer active military, is in training to become a firefighter in Boston. “I’ve never been in that situation, so it was like, ‘I don’t understand what you mean, I just want to give you a check and rent an apartment,’” Morgan told the media.

First, let’s get the legal argument out of the way. Roberts is unquestionably in the wrong, and should lose easily in court. She specifically singled out Sgt Morgan’s lawfully protected class in denying him housing. Paragraph 1 of the Fair Housing for Veterans Fact Sheet from the Metropolitan Boston Housing Partnership:

What is fair housing and how does it relate to veterans?

Fair housing is a set of principles, civil laws and regulations which provide equal access and opportunity to housing for protected class members. It impacts the property owner’s policies, practices, procedures and services in terms of advertising, application, tenant selection, amenities, and termination. Under Massachusetts fair housing law, Chapter 151B, military status, which includes veterans is a protected class. Protected classes are designated groups of people and their families that are covered under fair housing law. The military status protected class covers veterans, those individuals on active duty, and those persons enrolled in the Reserves. (emphasis mine)

Sgt Morgan was shot at and risked his own life to protect this woman’s right to be an idiot. He returns to the states and seeks out a career running into burning buildings to save lives and property. The thrice-over hero is thanked by the hippie with veiled threats that he really shouldn’t come around, and that his money isn’t welcome in her part of town.

[On Memorial Day] we may ask our children to remember those who gave the utmost level of devotion to secure our freedoms. But we mostly don’t talk among ourselves about the fact that names are still being added to the list of the lost, names that until recently belonged to people, but now belong to memory, belong to the ages. Names that once brought smiles to parents’ faces and light to a lover’s eyes but now bring only a whistling blow to the pit of the stomach for those who loved them. Names that now signify a vast, empty, mournful space that actual people used to fill.

Just in time for Memorial Day, some MSNBC drone named Chris Hayes has lit up the internet with his confession that dead American troops don’t quite measure up to his exacting standards for what qualifies as a “hero.” Memo to Chris: they are heroes, and you don’t get a vote.

Though he may be shocked to hear it, America’s fighting men and women don’t care whether Chris Hayes considers their fallen comrades heroes or not. First, there’s the practical matter that almost no one – in uniform or out – watches MSNBC or the roster of progressive meat puppets that fill the short stretches between endless reruns of “Lock Up.”

But on a deeper level, our troops don’t do what they do to impress the likes of Chris Hayes – though he is perfectly willing to make his living in the shadow of their sacrifice. In the scheme of things, Chris Hayes’s views are important only as an object lesson in what our progressive elites really think about our military.

This is what NBC and the rest of the liberal elitist types think of our military. As Kurt points out later in his article, they simply don’t say it because their guy is in office right now, and because Americans – even those who weren’t there – remember how the left treated Vietnam veterans when they came home, and rightly react viscerally.

Chris Hayes might not think our troops are heroes. I might think he’s a self-absorbed, myopic, ungrateful whelp who couldn’t possibly fathom the sacrifice that provides and ensures his freedom to bloviate on television.

The Daily Mail reports that a Polish oil company worker, Jakub Perka, has discovered an “almost perfectly preserved” Kittyhawk P-40 that crash-landed in the Sahara Desert in 1942.

“Despite the crash impact, most of the aircraft’s cockpit instruments are intact,” according to the report.

In 1942 [the pilot] was a member of the RAF’s 260 Squadron, a fighter unit based in Egypt during the North Africa campaign.

By June of that year the Allies were retreating from ‘Desert Fox’ Erwin Rommel and his German forces.

On June 28 Ft Sgt Copping and another airman were tasked with flying two damaged Kittyhawk P-40 planes from one British airbase in northern Egypt to another for repair.

During the short flight Ft Sgt Copping lost his bearings, went off course and was never seen again.
[…]
It was documented at the time that there was a fault with its front landing gear which would not retract and the photographic evidence suggests the aircraft had its front wheel down when it crashed.
[…]
There is also flak damage in the fuselage, which is also consistent with documented evidence of Ft Sgt Copping’s plane.